Burkina Faso

The central plateau was long dominated by the Mossi kingdoms, notably Ouagadougou and Yatenga, which emerged around the fifteenth century and resisted absorption into the great Sahelian empires to the north. The west and southwest were home to other peoples and to trading towns linked to the gold and kola routes.

France conquered the region in the 1890s and administered it as Upper Volta. Independence came in 1960, followed by a series of coups. In 1983 a young army officer, Thomas Sankara, took power, renamed the country Burkina Faso — "land of upright people" — and launched an ambitious programme of self-reliance, mass vaccination, tree planting, and women's rights before he was killed in a 1987 coup led by his associate Blaise Compaoré.

Compaoré ruled for 27 years until a popular uprising forced him out in 2014. A fragile democracy followed, but the spreading Sahel insurgency and the army's frustration with it produced two coups in 2022. The military government now led by Ibrahim Traoré has broken with France and the West African bloc ECOWAS, aligned with Mali and Niger, and turned to Russia for security support.

Burkina Faso is ethnically diverse, with the Mossi making up about half the population and dozens of other groups — Fulani, Bobo, Lobi, Gurunsi, Senufo, Mandé — each with its own languages, masks, and traditions. Religion is mixed: a Muslim majority, a substantial Christian minority, and widely practised traditional beliefs, often layered together.

Despite its poverty, the country built a strong reputation in the arts. FESPACO, held in Ouagadougou every two years, is the largest African film festival, and the SIAO is a major craft and design fair. Bronze casting, mask-making, mud-cloth weaving, and the balafon (a gourd-resonated xylophone, recognised by UNESCO in the border region with Mali) are living traditions.

Social life runs on the extended family, respect for elders and chiefs, and long greetings. The Mossi emperor, the Mogho Naba, still holds a ceremonial court in Ouagadougou each Friday morning.

Burkina Faso is one of the poorest and least urbanised countries in the world. Most people farm — millet, sorghum, maize, and cotton, the main export — or herd livestock, and are highly exposed to drought and to the failure of the rains. Gold mining, both industrial and artisanal, has grown into the other pillar of the economy.

The insurgency has upended rural life across much of the north, east, and Sahel regions, displacing more than two million people into camps and swollen towns and cutting many communities off from markets, schools, and clinics. Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso remain relatively functional but absorb the strain.

Where daily life continues normally, it centres on the market, the mosque or church, the courtyard compound, and the shared evening meal, with the year turning on the single rainy season.

Burkinabè cooking is Sahelian and grain-based. The staple is tô, a stiff porridge of millet, sorghum, or maize, eaten with a sauce of leaves, okra, groundnut, or soumbala, a pungent condiment made from fermented néré seeds. Rice dishes such as riz gras (rice cooked in a tomato and meat sauce) are common in town.

Grilled meat is a Ouagadougou speciality — the city is known for its poulet bicyclette, lean free-range chicken grilled and served with chilli and raw onion. Brochettes, fried fish, and bean fritters are standard street food.

Millet beer, dolo, is brewed by women and sold in courtyards across Mossi country, and bissap (hibiscus) and dâblani (tamarind) juices, along with strong sweet tea, are the everyday drinks.

In more settled times, Burkina Faso's draws were cultural and low-key. The Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso, a bristling mud-brick structure in the Sudano-Sahelian style, is the best-known monument, and Bobo-Dioulasso's old Kibidwé quarter and lively music scene made it the country's cultural capital.

Southwest of Bobo, the Sindou Peaks are a ridge of wind-eroded sandstone pinnacles, and the Karfiguéla falls and the Domes of Fabédougou are nearby. In the far southwest, the stone Ruins of Loropéni, linked to the old gold trade, are the country's only UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The southeast held Burkina Faso's wildlife — the W and Arly parks, part of a transboundary complex with Niger and Benin, with elephant, antelope, and one of West Africa's last lion populations. Access to all of these is now severely restricted or impossible because of the security situation.